Johnny Rollerfeet's Echo Chamber

In 1980 our band opened for Badfinger in Albany New York. I was certainly aware of them because of their hits, and the fact that they were The Beatles baby brother band, they were on their label, Apple, and were heavily touted and influenced by them. I also knew that they were broke and this led to the tragic suicide of one of their founding members, Pete Hamm. It was not a pretty sight.

They arrived late to the venue with their gear in a rented station wagon with a small U-Haul trailer attached. They had to borrow cymbals from our drummer and rumor had it that they had never met one of the guitar players; he was an L.A. session guy who had learned the tunes via tapes. They were extremely quiet, not even insular, not only were they not talking to us, they were barely talking to each other. The club held a thousand and maybe 150 were in attendance, half of whom were our fans. We played an okay set; I don’t know if any of Badfinger saw it, we took no offense, that was typical. After our set I retreated to the dressing room and did a couple shots of bourbon and smoked a joint which was also typical. I began talking to the bass player who grunted one word answers. I don’t know why I was so persistent, it was obvious the man wanted to be left alone, but I think I was weirdly trying to cheer him up or at the very least show him I respected him. This one sided banter went on for an embarrassingly uncomfortable length of time until I asked him where he was from. He grunted, “Liverpool.” I dumbly asked “Did you ever see The Beatles?” It was as if the veil lifted. He smiled a broad grin and said in that oh so familiar accent of anyone that has ever seen A Hard Day’s Night maybe a couple of thousand times, “Sure, everyday, at The Cavern. They played lunchtime for our school. I saw them hundreds of times. It was the thing that made me want to play music.” He opened up completely. He regaled me with stories of the songs, the jokes, the girls waiting for hours outside. It was a phenomenon, this was just a local band, they weren’t famous yet but it was obvious that Beatlemania was right around the corner. He was there the day Brian Epstein walked down those sweaty crappy cellar steps and witnessed the scorching heat that was John Lennon for the first time. Badfinger had to do their set and I called to our bass player, The Bass Player, and said “We have got to go watch this.” The Bass Player had had the first pair of Beatle boots I had ever seen in the flesh in fourth grade. We had been best friends ever since. Our love of music that was from England was all consuming. We had Freddie and the Dreamers albums for God’s Sake. He was as buzzed as I was, (probably more) and we made our way down to the audience area. Badfinger started out with 3 or 4 of their hits. They played them reasonably well and everybody seemed satisfied if not a bit relieved. The Bass Player and I felt we had heard enough and were turning to go when the band announced, “And now we’re going to do some of the songs we used to do back at The Cavern Club.” They launched into “Hippy Hippy Shake”. The room exploded. It was The Mersey Beat. The sound that changed the world. I had heard it on record, I had witnessed how it had changed styles but this was it in the here and now. And lordy lordy it was exciting. The proceeded to play “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” and “Whole Lotta Shaking.” The bass drum sounded like it was fending off the German army. The guitars wanted to teeter off the track but held just firm enough where you were in awe. Suddenly all the pain of the singer was either washed away or crystallized into a sheer angry force that rendered the audience spell bound. Then they did a couple more of their biggest hits and were gone. They were drenched in sweat and so was I. I’ve been to Liverpool and I’ve been to The Cavern Club although it’s now just a replica, the original was torn down much to McCartney’s grief. But that was the closest I ever came to the real deal, a memory of a lifetime. (Sidenote: The bass player from Badfinger committed suicide a few years later.)

Not long after Badfinger I found out that Little Richard was preaching at a church in my hometown on Easter Sunday. How the hell I found out about this I don’t know. I certainly wasn’t in the inner Baptist church circle. It wasn’t in the paper. Nobody I knew even went to church. Anyway I went to see Little Richard with a gal and The Bass Player and his gal and we drove all night from some gig hours away. I had taken some speed to stay awake. We got to the church just a half an hour early and the place was mobbed. “No more allowed in”, an usher told me, “There’s close circuit TV down in the basement.” Who the hell wants to watch anything on closed circuit TV? So I did the same thing at the gates of that church that I’m going to do at the gates of heaven: I lied my ass off. I told him we had traveled for two days straight, with barely any gas or food but we NEEDED this as a religious conversion. He let us stand in the back. We were the only four white people there. It was really cool. Just like what I assumed a ‘50s rock show would be. You could see how effectively early African-American rockers had “borrowed” from the church. There was a local woman who did a couple solo pieces on the organ, very Aretha Franklin. Then they brought out a local gospel quartet, very Temptations. Excellent stuff. Then Little Richard had a couple of openers that traveled with him. Once again two dynamite quartets, totally rocking, all for Jesus. Then the star of the show, the most beautiful man in show business, arrived to preach: Little Richard hisself. And what did Richard preach about on the day that Jesus was resurrected? Homosexuality. I gather he was against it despite the fact that his is flamingly gay, but like us all; he was looking for a check, the cash, the payola, the bling to make it to next the gig. So, if anti-homosexuality was what you wanted to hear, that’s what you were going to hear. He even said, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Hallelujah. Then people brought up gifts to the alter, someone even carried a lamb but in retrospect I realize it was just great theater but I bought it at the time. This really attractive Black woman in the pew ahead of me with a cool leopard dress said, “I can see it in your eyes baby, you want to accept Jesus.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her what she saw in my eyes was Crystal Meth. After that I became a Gospel freak for awhile, it was such a great musical experience. There was a group called The Mighty Clouds of Joy that had a real Philly Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes vibe that I dug and followed as often as I could. Those revival meetings were the closest I ever came to seeing an old Alan Freed rock and roll show in Boston or Cleveland. I gotta find me a cool swinging over the top Baptist church to go to in my current area. That shit was fun.

As the band progressed we started expanding our geographical touring, and began playing Boston. We were looking for a producer to capture the raw energy we were getting on stage that appeared to be so infectious to our audience. This led, somehow, to some conversations with the great producer Jimmy Miller. The Keyboard Player, who I said before was by far the best musician in the band, (he actually had many a private lesson with Johnny Johnson, Chuck Berry’s astonishing keyboard player who was so integral to the sound of those Chess records, and I think he got a lesson from Eubie Blake once just by knocking on his door. Eubie’s advice was to ‘take a year and work on your left hand’ which seemed an eternity at the time but now I realize what brilliant advice that was….) had a good vision as to how smoozing could help, and had made contact with Jimmy Miller’s agent. Miller had produced five of the great Rolling Stone’s albums, specifically Exile on Main Street, our favorite. This was exciting. Unfortunately this was not Jimmy Miller’s peak. Heroin had ravaged his soul and mental ability and he was probably just looking for a check to go shoot up. We had these meetings at a club in Boston called The Channel where we played a few times and we became friends with the management there who invited us to their 5th year anniversary. Several bands were playing, to be headlined by The Replacements, my favorite band at the time. The Responsible girl, The Keyboard Player and I all drove to Boston in a beat up Mazda to spend the day with The Replacements. We had to borrow $5 from Chris Marrs their drummer for gas to get home. If the look in his wallet was any indication it was his last five dollars. We caught their soundcheck which was incredibly powerful, and then proceeded to hang out with their genius albeit tortured guitarist Bob Stinson all day. I had a few brief words with Paul Westerberg who was quiet but nice but couldn’t be engaged in conversation really. Bob, on the other hand, couldn’t have been any sweeter, and basically told me his life story. By the time the club filled with a thousand people the excitement, particularly at the front of the stage had reached a fever pitch. Of the thousand attendants, maybe the first couple hundred closest to the band were hard core ‘Matts fans the rest were curiosity seekers. The Replacements had won the Village Voice’s prestigious Pazz and Jop poll the prior year and just put out a new album “Tim” that had received a 5 star review from Ira Robbins in Rolling Stone. In the land of Aerosmith and The Cars, (bear in mind this was prior to The Pixies) there were a lot of rock star wanna-bes in the back of the club with skeptical disdainful glances wanting to see what all the fuss was about. The Replacements were known for their brilliant songs, genius guitar player and drunken chaotic shows where songs weren’t always completely performed, anything could change at the drop of a guitar and the band was flying off the rails at all times. The closest thing that compares now is a band called The Black Lips, I recommend them highly. This was not a band that played up to the industry. They were going to have fun at all costs. They were MY TEAM. If the opposing teams at the time were U2 and R.E.M., well, you can see who won. But God I loved those ‘Matts. Westerberg would wear his heart on his sleeve, wash it down with a shot of whiskey and play it at a tempo that made Johnny Thunders look tame. Bob was wearing green tights with no underwear and kept flashing his dick at the front of the stage. This seemed to annoy Westerberg who yanked Bob’s guitar cord until his amp toppled off the drum riser and into the audience. I still have a vision of Bob drunkenly fishing his guitar out of the audience by the cord as the band played on. Somebody in the front must have been heckling Tommy, or spitting on him or belting him in the foot because he put down his bass and dove into the mosh pit to confront his tormentor man to man. The band played on. They were doing what at the time had been the closest thing they ever got to a hit which was “I Will Dare” but Westerberg stopped singing and dove into the pit to assist his pal Tommy. These were Minneapolis boys and they stuck together. The Band played on. I had a great side stage vision of their roadie taking this all in, and he charged out from the side to, I assumed, rescue them. No such luck. He grabbed the microphone to finish singing the song, letting the bandmates fend for themselves. As I said, the band played on. It was the closest I’d ever come to being in the center of a rock and roll hurricane. It was a fantastic show.

In our continued pursuit of a producer we heard that Nick Lowe was to playing at a local club. We secured the opening slot. Nick had produced one of our favorite albums: Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model. We felt that it would be good to leave Nick a note, letting him know that we were interested in having him produce. We were never known for our subtlety. We planned a full fledged attack. We bought cans of black spray paint. At 4 o’clock in the morning The Persuader broke into the club, a no brainer for him, there wasn’t even an alarm to trip. The World’s Bitchiest Man, The Wolf, The Persuader and I entered donned in black ninja gear. We completely covered the dressing room with LARGE notes to Nick. “NICK PRODUCE US” “NICK WE NEED YOU” “NICK, THIS WILL BE YOUR BIGGEST HIT!!” The next night the club owner was furious. He was an elderly Italian guy, I liked him, but he was so angry I heard that he hit his head against the wall. Repeatedly. How could they do this to me? He made us paint it over and docked us two weeks pay. Needless to say Nick Lowe never called. But it was the closest I ever got to mindless terrorism and I regret none of it.

This showed up in my feed reader, but I don’t see it on Hamell’s official site. Sometimes RSS feeds go wonky and Google’s Reader can’t tell where a post came from. This may be one of those, or it could have been pulled from his site for other reasons. I’m (probably illegally) copying it here so that I have it at hand. Hamell’s a great story teller, and his stories are always worth being told.